NEW RESOURCES
New-to-me and in development: an online museum about Buffalo Soldiers. From the site: “The Buffalo Soldiers’ Online Museum, founded by Major Andrew Aaron Jr., informs, unites, and educates the general public on the history of The Buffalo Soldiers. The Buffalo Soldiers was a regiment of the United States Army commissioned in 1866 and decommissioned in 1951 and focused on the individual histories of these men of valor. Our online museum provides a tour, video and pictures, as well as, a personal bibliography of Major Andrew Aaron, Jr.” I actually found out about the museum via an article about Mr. Aaron.
Opera Magazine now has a digital archive. “Previously, ten years of back issues had been available, but as of today leading institutions including universities, government departments, colleges and libraries will be able to instantly access all issues, dating back to 1950, via the app and online. This enables users to browse issues on their preferred device, with IP authentication allowing institutional access both on and off site.” Not free, if you didn’t get that from the summary.
In development (if funding’s available): an archive of tax forms for charitable foundations. “The library’s Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives has more than 800,000 individual tax records that were filed by thousands of foundations with the Internal Revenue Service between 1971 and 1997. Those records were sent to the IUPUI archives by the Foundation Center, which collects information about private foundations on behalf of the public. The library is seeking funding to digitize the documents and upload them to an e-archive site, making them easily accessible at no charge.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
WordPress 4.6 beta 3 is now available.
The Internet Archive will keep tracking political ads right through election day. “As the Democrats and Republicans convene at their national party conventions in coming weeks, the general election kicks into full swing. Thanks to generous support from the Rita Allen Foundation, we are delighted to announce that the Political TV Ad Archive, a project of the Internet Archive, will be ramping up to track political ads airing in eight key battleground states in the lead up to Election Day.”
USEFUL STUFF
PC World: 5 essential Google Drive extensions for Chrome. Oooh, I like the one for saving text to Google Drive.
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Interesting: a doctor was was able to use Facebook posts to determine the timing of a stroke. “In treatment of stroke care, timing is everything. One of the first things a doctor or EMT has to determine in the case of suspected stroke is when the last time the patient was healthy and coherent. For Marlene Grimes, 82, spending time on the computer one day in April 2016, playing card games and replying to Facebook posts, may have been what saved her life.”
Wired: YouTube is Becoming Many YouTubes to Keep Its Video Crown. Unfortunately, in my experience, the search and recommendations for all of them are pretty bad. “In addition to the original YouTube app, the company now has three other apps devoted to distinct niches—YouTube Music, YouTube Kids and YouTube Gaming. Harding says the decision to go with those categories came out of breaking down which areas of interest had large, growing audiences with distinct enough habits to merit creating a separate space that catered to their unique ways of using YouTube.”
Of course object recognition will be used to sell advertising. Of course it will. “Snapchat has filed a patent application for a system of advertising using object recognition to serve users sponsored filters. The technology outlined by the company would identify items in users’ pictures, and then offer them image overlays from brands related to these objects.”
RESEARCH AND OPINION
An interesting look at how the science dissertation may be changing. “Not every dissertation has to be a monograph. That’s what disciplinary associations in the humanities have been saying for years, as they advocate for a broader definition of what constitutes the doctoral capstone. But what about the natural sciences? New research from North Carolina State University suggests that math- and science-oriented institutions are seeing a big shift toward article-style dissertations, and that the trend is likely to continue.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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